Saturday 13th May 1st Xl v Garforth away

Far Too Early A Finish - Hic!

For those of you from further afield let me position Garforth on the map for you. Look for London and then head up (north), if you get to Newcastle and haven't spotted Leeds, get rid of that crap map and buy yourself a better one! Having found Leeds Garforth is probably just about under the 'S', i.e. to the east of the city.

Prior to Tongs arrival there Garforths major claim to fame was, along with Kippax (which is next door) as being the wife swapping centre of the north, though the best that I could ever do for mine was two bags of coal - not that that wasn't a good deal.

Continuing the poor tossing performance of Tong skippers Reg lost the toss and Tong were inserted to bat. This was followed immediately by enunciation's from the Garforth players that this was definitely a 200+ wicket. Perhaps they were talking about our abilities and not their own!

A damp outfield accompanied by grass that had been cut to number 5 on the hairdressers rating rather than 1, meant that very few shots would actually reach the boundary. So the slow but patient start by Reg and junior Shack gave the players chance to walk the edge of the jungle beyond the ground and abuse the local dogs and small boys. There has obviously been a certain amount of interbreeding between the two since one of the small boys seemed to spend most of the afternoon crawling on all fours around the boundary edge.

Amazingly George wasn't interested in these little urchins announcing that they were a little rough, though I'm not sure when he tried them!

Back to the game - still a little slow - so back to the spectators, which included our long standing followers of father and two sons beamed in from Mars. It doesn't matter where we are playing they still manage to dig us out. They are much impressed by our change of leagues, though not because of the better standard of cricket, more because every ground now has a bar.

Reg hits a four, but anyway lets get back to the exciting bits.

For the first hour and a half there was great anticipation because Buttocks had brought a posh Volvo with a telly in it and most of the players were keen to watch the rugby union game. Great disappointment though when it was found that the game was on Sky and Buttocks' car only had terrestrial channels - what a cheapskate. George Hornby was promptly dispatch to the clubhouse to see if they had Sky. He returned with the lame excuse that some of the local 'oikes' were intent on watching the racing on Channel 4. So it was back to the cricket.

Reg hits another four, but more excitingly I stand in some dog shit and Beaky borrows George's shorts because his legs are sweaty!

By the 20th over the score had rattled on to an amazing 46 for 0, I must have missed some fours, and the crowd were getting somewhat er........., well somewhat. A few subtle hints were beginning to permeate from the players to their colleagues in the centre like "Get the f*** on with it".

Stung by this Reg does a quick tango and smites a ginormous six back over the bowlers head - this is more like it. More action follows and though it is coupled with the fall of the occasional wicket the Tong total starts to climb towards the 200 suggested by the Garforthians. Though Buttocks, McKinley and senior Shack all went for an early duck shoot, the rest of the squad chipped in manfully. Buttocks and Irry both fell to that devilish straight 'un' whilst senior Shack had obviously been talking to Elton too much and went for an aboriginal walkabout.

Reg's excellent form continued, though he failed to recover the £10 lost to senior Shack last season when he didn't reach 50, by falling in the nervous 40's again. The Tong innings concluded at 178 for 9

Previous weeks have seen the discovery of a number of strange local rules in the Leeds League and this week was to be no exception. Apparently the wickets at opposing ends must be placed so that they are at least one full set out of alignment with each other. This factor makes Piggy's dismal even more worrying than it actually was; perhaps he was in line with the church tower when the ball hit his pad.

Now I must be honest and state that I missed the fall of the first 3 Garforth wickets because I was having to rewrite Hornby's lottery ticket at the local Post Office! By the time that I had done this and fed the dogs Kirsty (daughter and scorer) had informed me via mobile that Garforth were 2 down. By the time I got to the ground Garforth were already 3 down and the fourth wicket fell as I parked the car.

Liver was by now already beginning to moan.

Smiler was steaming in, Lacky had taken his first Tong wickets (he is a bowler!) and catches were being held all over the place. Garforths top scorer in this debacle was young Edwards with 11 and after that the next highest was 2!

The Garforth total of 27 left Smiler with 6 wickets for 11 runs and Lacky with 4 for 12. Obviously whatever Smiler has been doing on a Friday night he has now passed that advise on to Lacky and it's working for him. It's perhaps also why Lacky wasn't out with the lads the previous night! What's at Breton Hall anyway?

The long journey home was made even more tedious by forced stops at the Gaping Goose and the Malt Shovel, but eventually a very merry and noisy crowd descended on the Greyhound and scared away the rest of the customers.